A fairly common and rather nice action by the Idaho Legislature. In Kansas, the only subject of such "commendments" recently have bee retiring legislators (and none of the bill authors have much sense of humor).
It once was common for the state governors to send "personal congratulations" to graduating H.S. honor roll and/or scholarship recipients. Often individual legislators would do the same for those in their districts. Now the only ones they write to are the lobbyists (and they don't post those letters often).
In times past, "freshmen" legislators were actually encouraged to come up with things of this sort to "practice" herding a bill through the sometime arcane legislative process.